In 2012 Pete Sortwell did something no one had ever done before: he wrote a book based entirely on Amazon product reviews. The book was so successful, he wrote a series. The series was so successful, he spent the next year releasing other projects he’d been working on. Now, for the first time the stories he wrote while learning his craft are available on Kindle and in paperback.

From people stuck on roofs, to stalkers following their wives, to weight watchers’ meetings, this book is filled with oddballs, thieves, lowlifes, and other such lovelies. This book also contains the side story to Pete’s debut novel ‘So Low, So High’, so if you’re interested in finding out more about Fred, then this is the place.

This month's Book With Buzz: "Little Fires Everywhere" by Celeste Ng
From the bestselling author of Everything I Never Told You, a riveting novel that traces the intertwined fates of the picture - perfect Richardson family and the enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. See more

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Top customer reviews

Although we've been exposed to countless bits of British/Irish entertainment, thanks to Amazon and Netflix, I think the average American reader will possibly find these shorts somewhat difficult to follow. Good bathroom reads, worth the price.

A great collection of short stories. Some witty and funny, others uniquely disturbing almost bordering on "Gonzo Lit". But all of them are ingeniously creative and written to draw you in. You will not be able to read just one.

Who Likes Short Shorts is a compilation of ten stories, told with a British slant. I really enjoy writers from across the pond, but felt author Sortwell, went a bit overboard when it came to slang. I did not recognize many words, albeit I read tons of English authors.Also, this author has a knack for humor, which I've previously enjoyed, however this go-round, I think I was wanting humor but got serious subject matter. This is my fault for expecting something other than what was written in the description.

I will read more by Sortwell, but this one just didn't hit me as well as his others.

Pete Sortwell, who, according to his Amazon blurb, specializes in humor writing, has compiled "Who Like Short Shorts," a collection of ten, mostly serious short short stories. Unfortunately for this American reader, the stories (which were told in the first person) relied heavily on working class English slang that was at times difficult to follow.

For a writer of humor, Sortwell's stories deal with some very serious material. Almost every one of them concerns crime, death, or addiction in some way, and most of them would be more at home in a mystery anthology than a book of humor. Since the stories are very short, under ten pages each, they need to grab the reader's attention quickly and make their point (often in a surprise ending) to be effective. This is where the extensive use of slang will make the book a difficult read, and a more difficult enjoy, for U.S. readers. Having to decipher one paragraph after another to try to figure out just what Sortwell is saying destroys the timing needed to make these stories effective.

To be fair, a couple of the stories worked quite well for me, especially "One Flew Over the Policeman's Bonnet," in which a retiring policeman decides to commit a murder before he leaves the job. As you might expect, things don't work out as he intended. Another good story is "So Low So High," in which a man threatens to jump off the roof of a medical building if he doesn't get better treatment.

Another point I think I should make is that the ten stories take up about 40% of the book, which is about 100 pages total. I'm generally critical of "books" that contain mostly excerpts from the author's other books, but, since most of Shotwell writes are humorous essays, the excerpt can be appreciated on their own, unlike the first couple of chapters of a dramatic literary novel. Unfortunately, there's just as much slang in these excerpts, which are just as difficult for American readers to follow. And, since humor is highly dependant on timing, the delay involved in trying to figure out what Sortwell is saying makes it hard to find any laughs, or even grins, in the material.

I suspect that British readers will find this material much easier to follow than I did and may find the material more enjoyable as a result. I can only base my review on my own take of the material, and a lot of it was hard to for me to digest because of the heavy slang. I can't recommend a book that I found more a chore to comprehend than an amusement.

In a huge fan of short stories, and the ones in this book are superb. The main gist of flash fiction is to tell a whole story in as few words as possible, and the author has definitely succeeded. I'd definitely read more.

This collection features ten short stories by Pete Sortwell as well as samples from his other full-length novels. Each story is told from the perspective of the main character, and the stories focus on a wide range of primary characters, from immigrant labor to mentally ill former policemen to a physically disabled man living in an assisted care facility. Perhaps the strongest story in the collection is "One Flew Over the Policeman's Bonnet" in which Sortwell delves in to the mind of a former policeman who has recently struggled with mental illness. The story is well-paced and well-written, and the ending is a bit unexpected. The story "Hero" is also quite solid as it takes one in to the mind of a regular person who happens to be in a convenience story during a robbery attempt and decides to intervene. Overall, a solid collection that's worth a read.